1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to technical arrangements which provide an efficient billing system of service rates on an individual piece-of-information basis or on a unit-of-information basis in a variety of information services. The services may range from music to video to text, including news transmitted by means of radio communications, particularly by satellite communications. The present invention is also directed to a billing system for public utilities rates.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Radio broadcasting, television broadcasting, and satellite communications using communications satellites are now in widespread use. Billing service fees, and then collecting them in a timely manner, are the major problems associated with radio communications, because radio communications are not provided with the comparable system that is normally used by telephone lines where communications are performed on the basis of handshake under the control of telephone exchanges. In television broadcasting, it is a common and established practice to bill and collect fees associated with each television set based on the assumption that available channels are selected and watched on the television set by viewers or users since it was installed. There are some systems, now in use, of satellite broadcasting service, in which signals are scrambled before transmission, and the user terminal is equipped with a de-scrambler which de-scrambles the received signal. In this case, a predetermined monthly rate of fee is billed.
The first system described above, however, suffers poor performance in collecting information service fees, because payment of the fees is entirely dependent on the user's will. The second system of using a de-scrambler puts the burden of installing the de-scrambler on the receiver of the signals, incurring extra cost to the user. This can restrict the commercial expansion of the number of subscribers.
The conventional fee systems are generally fixed monthly fee systems, which do not allow fees to be flexibly set depending on type of information, and also do not allow flexibility in the timing of the payment. This prevents the information provider from intensively broadcasting costly pieces of information only, from the commercial point of view. If the information provider does limit the broadcasting of popular information or programs in this manner, no commercial expansion in subscription is expected.
Those who particularly need information management for each individual customer are public utility suppliers such as companies or entities that provide electricity, gas or water services. Every household and office essentially requires water and energy supply such as gas and electricity. Public utilities rates for these items are now collected separately on an individual basis. An information provider may efficiently collect fees if the information service fee mentioned above were added to the utility rate of any item and then the combined fees are collected together. Such an efficient fee collection system may allow the information provider to recover costs for an investment as scheduled. With fees collected as scheduled, the information provider may have a good chance of scheduling operation of his capital which may be invested further to provide even more value-added information to subscribers.
In the present form of fee collection system for public utility services, each consumer is equipped with a utility meter which indicates how much electricity, gas or water has been consumed. The consumer is billed for the amount indicated. More specifically, a public utilities company periodically reads the meter of each consumer for the difference between the current reading and the previous reading, and bills the charge corresponding to the difference to each consumer. In this case, a reader must go to each consumer's place for reading meters one by one.
In present day environment a vast amount of information is now exchanged in a fast and accurate manner by electronic telecommunications means. Thus the reading of utility meters that are used as a basis for fee calculations may not have to depend upon readers. In other words, public utilities companies may not need a number of readers dedicated to meter reading operation, may save time and cost required for the operation, and may save a vast amount of personnel expenses. This may help restrict price rising of public utilities service, leading to economical benefit to every consumer.